Oddity of the Week - Moving Right Along
Created | Updated Feb 9, 2014
Did anybody call for a moving van?
Moving Right Along
Back in the late 1970s, this Researcher was in a pub on the west coast of Ireland, and struck up a conversation with a local lad. The lad wanted to know if travelling around by horse-drawn caravan weren't, well, boring. It wasn't his idea of a cool holiday. We replied that no, we found it quite interesting, seeing the countryside at two miles per hour The guy looked skeptical. Then his face cleared.
'Oh,' he said. 'You must be used to it, being from America an' a'.'
We suspected that the Irish belief that Americans still travelled by covered wagon stemmed from the TV Western. I chuckled, and explained that my grandfather was the only person I knew of who had gone east by covered wagon. It was back in the early 20th Century, and his folks left Texas to return to Tennessee. The U-Haul van hadn't been invented yet.
We all grew up with the Western. One popular programme was sponsored by Twenty Mule Team Borax. This washing powder got its start when somebody or other discovered that the alkali desert yielded borax, and that it was good for something besides making miners' lives miserable. The twenty-mule team sounds strange until you look at this picture. Then you get it.
Our ancestors moved around a lot in those Conestoga wagons. Where's Conestoga? Glad you asked. There's a road about fifteen miles from Philadelphia called Conestoga Road. Near the Main Line. That's where most of the early travellers bought their wagons. Then they headed west, down the Pennsylvania Turnpike. At Mechanicsburg, they stopped for repairs, hence the name. From there, they turned southward, along the Great Wagon Road, towards Virginia and points south.
Tough things, those Conestoga wagons. Not comfortable to ride in, we suspect. No cupholders. No backseat TVs, either. In fact, no springs. But hey, they got you there.
And if the enemy approached, you could always circle the wagons.
